Last month, 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell, a U.S. Air Force service member, self-immolated outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
To be clear, it was not suicide. It was murder.
Granted, there was no gun involved. No one pulled the trigger or detonated a weapon. Yet, make no mistake, the gruesome self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell was not volitional. This young, patriotic U.S. soldier is a hero, and was described as the "kindest, gentlest, silliest little kid in the Air Force."
He was completely in his senses, perhaps more than many of us. He had his eyes open and refused to look away as most of us do when the sight is too unbearable. He watched with great pain, anguish and horror the unspeakable crimes against humanity being broadcast live on television. He was a witness to the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Children blown to smithereens; women raped in Israeli prisons; a grandmother carrying a white flag shot down by an Israeli sniper; hospitals bombed; journalists assassinated; withholding of food and water to starving people. The sickness surely sent shivers up his spine. Who is responsible for that? Who should be held to account? Who is it that has aided and abetted the crime of genocide that has poisoned this entire generation?
More poignantly than most, Aaron understood the role his country, the United States, was playing in the extermination of a civilian population. Actually, he clearly held the Joe Biden administration as directly complicit in the genocide by providing weapons, bombs, billions of dollars of aid, diplomatic cover as in vetoing cease-fire resolutions, and the grotesque use of its global media to whitewash the foul misdeeds that Netanyahu-led Israeli government is committing. He knew, what we all knew, but could stay silent no longer. He was sickened to such a level that he had to do something so drastic and with such finality, to honor all those men, women and children killed.
While most of us carry on with our daily lives, he refused to be distracted. Moreover, rather than turn away, rationalize indifference, or, even, harm others, he chose to sacrifice his own life to awaken the dead conscience of a morally bereft society. He was not crazy; in fact, he was saner than the rest of us. So, while he may have poured a flammable liquid all over himself and lit the match, what drove him to such an act of desperation was the genocide being committed by his country that has made a gross caricature of a just world order premised on freedom, equality and the rule of law. "Genocide Joe" as some refer to him, and his pipsqueak cronies, the U.K., Germany and Canada, are all guilty. The whole lot of these rotten leaders of the so-called free world have poisoned us all. They have killed all our innocence and are responsible for his death.
Bushnell was an active member of the U.S. Air Force and took an oath to defend his country from enemies, both foreign and domestic. He was 25 years old and in the prime of his life. A morally, upright individual, he was kind to a fault. He was guilty of believing in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and guilty of believing that the "West" were the good guys. He was guilty of believing he was a force of good in a world gone haywire. He grew up believing in the American dream and was traumatized when he realized the nightmare that it is. He realized that the real enemies of the American people were its "ruling class" who have wreaked havoc on the lives of ordinary men, women and children.
On his Facebook page, he had written: "What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?"
His decision was to act, to sacrifice himself to raise awareness about the seriousness of the slaughter and depth of depravity happening in Gaza, Palestine.
While I do not agree with the decision he made, we are in no moral position to judge him. What he understood by this selfless act was life, not death. He gave his life for the mere chance that the shock would push people to act and save lives. He did what he understood as the best way to express his unequivocal disgust with the callous, cold-blooded murder of men, women and children in Gaza.
However faint the hope, this act of extreme protest was intended to shake those deep in a moral slumber – and it has shaken us all. A precious life sacrificed so the rest of us can acknowledge all the precious lives lost. Let us use his ultimate sacrifice to remind us to censure warmongers: denounce the far-right extremism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cowardly ilk and criticize the Biden administration’s complicity in the war crimes. Lastly, and above all, let’s honor Aaron, and all those innocent lives lost, by condemning those who are too cowardly to say, "Cease-fire now."
